Homecoming Game on PBW: Debrief

[sparhawk]

We are still in turn 2400.8, and due to the game rules you always have a partner, therefore this game is also usefull for newbies.

Any one interested??

Sparhawk

[Stone Mill]

Homecoming Debrief
Many years have passed since the Mercator and Whatsit races have splintered into colonies far off in the reaches of the galaxy. Rumors inspired hope of finding their homeworld Premius in a hidden system called Narcisston.
Driven by new technology, the Mercator and Whatsit empires reunited and forged the road home. But this road was blocked by other empires with similar aspirations. Galactic war raged for many years, but cheers echoed when new warp technology opened the way to Premius. In year 2409.2, Premius was established with a space yard, mineral, rad, and organics facilities, declared soverignity over the quadrant, and sued for peace.

Sparhawk / Geo, if you would verify that the victory conditions have indeed been met, I believe this game can be ended.

I want to thank all players for making this really fun, and for simply being excellent and responsible pbw gamers. You have pushed me to think hard, work hard, and combat some tough competition. If interested, I would like to suggest a game debrief where we can talk about strats and how this went.

SPECIAL THANKS
Geo- PBW rocks, thanks for the setup help.
Sparhawk- Great game concept!
1FSTCAT- Pootopian empire poured it on early, and never let up. You forced me to stay on my toes and try new things. Devastating campaign against my partner late game.
Debate- Angora Fish grew extremely huge, and were quite a threat. Massive battles!
Dinglehopper- Welcome home, Whatsit. Great work, partner!
Gandalph- Good sparring against Whatsit.
Hiruu- Haradun kept our treaty until very late, when unfortunately we had to break all relations.
Ironchickens- I really like your shipset!! Unfortunately, your partner was the Poo and they were putting heat on me big-time. I am sorry to have attacked you early because of this. Your race was Organic/Religious, which would have been a nightmare had you expanded and grown with your partner's help.

Good Game!
Stone Mill- Mercator Orbis

[sparhawk]

Yes, It was a great game.
I don't know if it was a close one (well me and my partner were not even close to our homesystem), but it was certainly a great victory for stonemill and dinglehopper.

about the game: Early in the game everyone was just friendly to each other, untill I had contact with whatsit (stonemill). He was really starting to play hard game just from the beginning(I like that! ) and I had no time to prepair myself for his forces .
For me it went down from that point, got first beaten by 1fstcat and had to wait for 20 turns before I got some planets running.
During that time I also was allied to hiruu (because two players quit), and because we were first enemies (turn1-20) and now allies, we layed somewhat behind with the other teams.

For me it was fun to play, first knowing that you have to coordinate the colonization and exploration to find your homeworld and partner.
And secondly that the game can be won, even if your are not winning (well, stonemill and dinglehopper were winning on both terrains) the game by force, but also if you colonize your homeplanet.

Thanks to all the players and Geoschmo for making this game a great experience.

So who is ready for Homecoming 2 (Version SEIV 1.78)

Sparhawk

[1FSTCAT]

That was definitely a good game. I feel sorry for people like Sparhawk, that were locked away in corner, for the most part, with no room to expand (He was to the Poo's northwest).

I made the decision early-on to go after Mercator, just because of his position. He was where I wanted to expand. I was able to seize a few worlds and stop him from creating a few new colonies, but I didn't fully understand the scope of his expansion until I started exploring some more. Then I found he'd been pretty much moving EVERYWHERE and colonizing everything in his path.

About mid-game, after he pushed me out of the sector we were fighting over, I decided that he definitely had the edge, with more planets in his possession, so I built large fleets, blocked my borders, and focused on the research necessary to open warp points. I didn't find my partner (Iron chicken) until about this point. He was in a fairly bad position, fighting with the Whatsits AND the Mercator. Unfortunately, he had less research than I did, and I asked him to focus on Spaceyard research while I was working on Stellar Manip. He did, but I still only had Space Yards 1, when I began production of the warp point creator. After about 5 turns, I noticed new warp points appearing in Whatsit territory, so I gathered all of my fleets together and began my raid! I was able to destroy all of Whatsits colonies in 1 sector, and a few in the next. I split my fleet up, and sent several ships to another sector, who were all successful, until I ran out of supplies. This caused a "raiding delay" of about 5 turns, and by that time, the Mercator had assembled a defense fleet for the Whatsits, and they were easily able to destroy my fleets. (My ships were only equipped with level 2 ECM and level 2 sensors -- never researched shields or Phased Weapons)

At some point after I sent out my fleets, Sparhawk's substitute player decided "now" was a good time to take back the planets I took from him, earlier in the game. I only had 4 systems, but this, of course, shut down the entire system with rioting, which really put a dent in my capability. Early-on I made the decision to go after him after I looked at my scoreboard, and after the Mercator repelled me out from his territory, and saw that Sparhawk's empire was REALLY poor, with only a few planets, and no "units". Unfortunately, I didn't know it was Sparhawk's empire, or I probably wouldn't have attacked him, as we've played well together in other games!

Anyway, this was fairly near the end, as I discovered the Whatsits and the Mercator, purely by accident, at their soon-to-be home planet. My ship wasn't equipped with weapons, but it did have cloaking detection, stealth armor, and the ability to deploy fighters, mines and satellites. (Unfortunately, it had none on board!)

As the message I sent out indicated, I rammed the Whatsit ship, but it was 600kt, and mine was only 400, so I didn't expect a whole lot. Unfortunately, the ram only did 47% damage, and his ship was at least 70% cargo containers.

This was pretty much the mid-point of my downhill slide. After The Mercator defeated my fleet in Whatsit territory, they sent another fleet into my northernmost sector, which broke through after a fairly large scuffle. Only 20% of his fleet made it, but that was enough to multiply the rioting that I was fighting off with Sparhawk's attack, and basically the end of an empire.

I made peace with Sparhawk but it was just too late. I built a small repulsion fleet to try to keep Mercator out of my next sector, but they failed too, since he had spent a little time to allow new ships to rendezvous with his attack fleet.

The End

Overall, I was really impressed with Mercator's play. He was shifty, he was slick, and most of all, hard to kill!

I didn't really run into anyone else, but from my perspective, the Whatsits had a ton of room for improvement. For the most part, they didn't use mines, and didn't have any planetary defenses. I saw fleets that looked like they were coming at me for an attack, and then they'd turn away because he would miss a turn or two. Then they'd come back, he'd miss, and then they'd go away. It was hella-confusing.

How'd it go for everyone else?

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by 1FSTCAT:
That was definitely a good game. I feel sorry for people like Sparhawk, that were locked away in corner, for the most part, with no room to expand (He was to the Poo's northwest).

Hmmm, really? I spent a lot of time setting the map up to prevent anybody from being locked in anywhere. I would hope his lack of expansion was due to the superior play of Poo rather than some screw up on the map on my part. I tried to make everyone more or less equidistant from their partner (Unknown at the beging of the game) and there home system (unconnected to the rest of the systems. It was a lot more complex than anything I had tried before. I hope everybody feels they had a fair shot at finding both.

Geoschmo

[ November 27, 2002, 14:24: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[1FSTCAT]

I definitely had a part in "locking him in". He had an escape to the west and south, but I believe there was another empire on his borders that way. We'll have to hear from him, on how that went.

--Ed

[1FSTCAT]

I'd like to make another suggestion:

I think if we do a Homecoming 2, we should make the galaxy larger, and the player requirement larger.

The element of exploration was intense, as was the search for the partner. I can imagine that will only increase as the size of the universe and the amount of potential partners increase.

We should definitely look for players that will be there from beginning to end. Maybe we can get references, or players should be recommended by players of this game?

--Ed

[Stone Mill]

Excellent comments!

The most awesome part of this game is trying to hook up with your partner (who is unknown to you until you find them), while trying to keep other partners from meeting each other! So much political posturing early on, deciding whether to allow passage, share comm channels, etc... Let's just say that we tried to inhibit the other partners from finding each other for as long as possible.

Per Sparhawk:
Early in the game everyone was just friendly to each other, untill I had contact with whatsit (stonemill). He was really starting to play hard game just from the beginning (I like that! )

FYI: Whatsit was Dinglehopper... I was Mercator. He did a lot of fighting in the west from the beginning, especially against Gandalph (the Corrians). When we discovered they were partners with the Angora Fish, Dinglehopper made it his mission to try and contain them.

Per 1FSTCAT:
I didn't find my partner (Iron chicken) until about this point. He was in a fairly bad position, fighting with the Whatsits AND the Mercator.

When I found out the Ironchickens were partnered with the Poo, I made it my mission to contain them. The Poo were giving me hell, and I could not afford them to get help. As soon as the Poo established a partnership with the IronChickens, I unfortunately had to roll through them. I really feel bad about that, because the Ironchickens were very likable and on good terms. But they were totally unprepared for war, and I snatched 3 systems from them before running out of gas. These systems proved valuable, as they were taken mostly in-tact via troop invasions.

As for the Poo- what can I say? He did some very crafty things. Excellent player. Of note: use of cloaking drove me nuts. Sniped colony ships and targets of opportunity behind the lines, eventually slipped through my tight defenses and found his partner. He matched me like a chess game, forcing me to fight an early war (which I hate!) so I had to come up with strats I had never attempted before. We mostly battled in a critical system which we both knew was a gateway at the center of the map. I had to pull out a combination of mines, Weapons platforms, and fighters to keep him from knocking out my planets (and he knew very well how to counter all of these). My early invasion fleets were obliterated when trying to pry into his systems. My partner Dinglehopper did not know how to protect his planets that well, and Poo absolutely ravaged several systems and caused paralyzing riots. I did arrive in time to secure his systems and secure our homeworld.

Dinglehopper played really well, although he lost email access early in the game (along with a few turns), which hurt planning and coordination. However, We were the first partnership in the game, which proved quite impactful. We shared tech immediately, and his acquisition of Fighters, Space Yards, and Warp tech helped save my position and got us opening hiddens systems before anyone else. He found our homeworld, held his position fairly well in the middle, and did a great job of waging a long war against the Corrians.

Angora Fish (Debate) were Organic. He expanded a massive empire and kept me out of the East. Very good player as well, although, he admitted this was his first time using Organics. His empire development was superb! However, his flaw was relying solely on Organic weaponry (which is quite limited) and experimenting on some ship designs that didn't really work. This resulted in several landslide battles. At the point when he attacked me, I was REALLY worried! His forces must have had a 4-1 advantage. I had to do some really hard work to limit damage until my better warships came on-line.

Wshew! that's all for now...

[sparhawk]

Yes, sorry Stone Mill: whatsit was offcourse Dinglehopper.

And for my placement: It was ok, but I took the wrong attitue: I was to friendly in the beginning.
And had to pay that price to 1fstcat (east), Dinglehopper (south-east) and Hiruu (south).
My placement was in the north west corner, so only three directions to go to..........
And because those guys (not 1fstcat in the beginning, but he got the idea some bit later)
were playing a what more aggresive attitue (to me): I lost a large amount of undefended colonies to them.

so that was my lesson: never trust you neighbour.
Offcourse this was cleared up, when hiruu and I became partners and 1fstcat was busy with whatsit.
But still, it was too late for me to mean something.

BUT THAT WON'T HAPPEN NEXT TIME!!!!

For homecoming2 we need some real Players: because we almost had trouble when two people left this game.
Luckly there where two people leaving, so it was easy to assign two new partner (me and hiruu)
But next time we really need players, who can stick to this game and won't leave because of a bad starting position (although there were no in this game---thanks geoschmo) or some other thinks.

So anyone who wants to play or knows someone who likes to play, just email me.
Because I think the best way to do this, is by invitation only.

Thanks

Sparhawk

[ November 27, 2002, 15:45: Message edited by: sparhawk ]

[Gandalph]

This was a fun game and I look forward to a new (>1.78) Homecoming.

No fault of Geo's, but the Corrian had 3 major problems. My corner position left me with only 2 exits, one through the north where the Bugs were (sorry for forgetting, but we didn't have much contact) and one to the northeast, straight through Whatsit territory. To the north was a hostile race and to the northeast was a hostile race. I chose to block access to the north, and head into Whatsit territory.

This leads to problem 2, I was unprepared for his fighters with rocket pods. This was only my second PBW game and I had never seen this strategy and it caught me totally off guard. He ripped through my initial fleets like a hot knife through butter. I quickly redesigned my ships and built up enough to push Whatsit back out of my system at great cost. During this time, he had developed PPB's and Intel and started fighting back with both. He was stealing 2 of my ships and resources every turn. It took no time to put my race in a state of turmoil I could not overcome.

Lastly was problem 3, I took on a religious race without making proper compensation to research, and then did not bother with early sensor research figuring I am going to end up with the Talisman so I don't need the sensor. Needless to say, I had a happy populace with a weak military, and on PBW this just won't work.
Despite all this, I still held out a possibility of winning anyway. The warp points that had opened exposed my Homeworld. As a Last effort, and 1 turn before losing my final planet to Whatsit intel, I built a new warship and a new colony ship and sent them towards the Homeworld, only to have them shot down by the Whatsit 2 systems away.

I learned alot in this game and will take these lessons back to PBW, and hopefully into a new game of HOMECOMING!!